BY FARHAN MUJAHID CHAK
The grotesque scenes of violence being inflicted on the Palestinians are heart-wrenching. “There were four,” screamed a distraught Palestinian father who lost all his children in an Israeli missile attack targeting civilian apartment buildings in Gaza.
This ongoing monstrosity only grows more appalling with media outlets like the BBC, CNN and France24, aiding and abetting the structures of power and narratives that dehumanize Palestinians.
And, just as ugly, are the ways in which they obfuscate reality and peddle falsehoods to paint Israel as the victim.
In his first TV interview since the Israeli onslaught, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twisted facts in his typical unabashed, pretentious and phony way.
“This was a struggle,” he wailed, “of law and those that disregard it.” What makes this even more incredulous is that he speaks of law while violating the Geneva Conventions and the Charter of the United Nations.
Unsurprisingly, the Narendra Modi-led Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in India has wholeheartedly supported the Israeli assault on Palestinians as BJP Islamophobes describe Kashmir and Palestine as front lines in the war against Islam.
This is eerily familiar to what Israel’s former Prime Minister Golda Meir once scathingly wrote on why Israelis “can never forgive the Arabs for forcing our children to learn to kill their children.”
Finally, after 11 days of grotesque bombardment, Israel has capitulated and agreed to a cease-fire.
In the killing fields of occupied Palestine and Kashmir, a tragic lesson is being learned that bodes ill for the future of our globalized world.
Terror begets the same. If the brazen war crimes being committed, dispossession, land appropriation or outright murder are not enough to compel the international community to act, then others will.
These last 11 days of hideous violence upon the Palestinian people should serve as an eye-opener. As South Africa’s late former President Nelson Mandela, who is a symbolic name in the fight against the apartheid system, wisely wrote: “when a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”
This story first appeared on dailysabah.com
